Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(105)

Joan had sat there for a long time. Whatever the pamphlet said, she knew that she’d done this. When she’d altered Nick’s history, she must have altered the history of the house too. It had just had the bad luck to be in the proximity of her power.

And she couldn’t help but ask the question: If she’d done this to Holland House, what other changes had she inadvertently made to the timeline?

Now, on her last morning in London, she walked the familiar path from Kensington High Street to what was left of the house.

Where do you keep going? Ruth had asked.

Joan didn’t know why she kept going back. Penance, maybe. The heaviness in her chest made more sense when she could see what she’d done to this place she’d loved. But it wasn’t just that. There were memories here that were nowhere else. She could walk through the gardens and imagine that he was here with her.

As Joan walked, she was joined by joggers and people pushing prams and walking dogs. There was a football field where the maze had once stood, and she could hear the distant smack of the ball, people shouting, the ref’s whistle.

After the long summer, the weather had finally turned. It was cool and drizzly as she walked past the house’s facade, past the little café, past the old icehouse. In the other timeline, food historians had churned ice cream within its thick walls, using fresh fruit from the kitchen gardens. In this timeline, it was a gallery space.

Joan lingered in the covered walkway between the icehouse and the old orangery. This bit was new—built after the rest of the house had been bombed. There were murals all the way down the wall, depicting a garden party in the Victorian era.

Joan’s favourite was the one where the partygoers were in an elaborate formal garden—ankle-high hedges creating intricate green loops. Women in voluminous skirts lounged against a central fountain. Whoever had painted this couldn’t have known the house, but they’d captured the mysterious atmosphere of the old gardens.

Joan stepped closer. She could almost have kept walking into the painting, she thought dreamily.

She caught herself with a sharp breath before the tug of yearning came.

Almost automatically, she grounded herself in the details of the moment—as Aaron had taught her. The smell of wet stone. The patter of rain outside the colonnade.

Footsteps.

Déjà vu washed over her. She turned toward the sound, knowing already that it wasn’t Nick. She’d have recognised the rhythm of his step. Still, her heart skipped in disappointment at the confirmation.

The newcomer was a soberly dressed man, perhaps twenty years old. He shook his umbrella carefully into the garden and then made his way down the walkway, stopping at the mural beside Joan.

His face was pale and Chinese—familiar, Joan thought. But recognition didn’t come until he stepped closer to the painting with an air of intent interest. He’d been an artist, she remembered.

Jamie Liu had been gaunt as a prisoner, but in this new timeline he was solidly built and healthy. He had an expensive haircut, and he was dressed for colder weather than it was—gloves and a dark blue trench coat.

I’ve met you, Joan wanted to blurt out. Except that she hadn’t met him. Just like she hadn’t met Nick, hadn’t met Aaron. Sometimes, the weight of remembering, when no one else did, made her feel like she was going mad. She’d seen people lying dead in these gardens—except that she hadn’t. Her family had died here—except that they hadn’t.

‘I love these paintings,’ she said a little awkwardly. She needed to hear him say something. She knew what his voice should sound like, and she needed the proof that her memories were real. ‘You almost feel as though you could step into the party.’

‘That would be nice.’ To her relief, his voice was the pleasant treble she’d expected. He turned to her, seeming curious but not uncomfortable. ‘It certainly looks like they were enjoying better weather.’

She smiled tentatively. ‘I’m Joan.’

‘I remember,’ he said.

The Lius remember. Joan shouldn’t have felt as shaken as she did. She stared at him.

Jamie gestured toward the garden beyond the walkway. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ He offered his umbrella to her.

Joan found her voice. ‘It’s not that bad out.’

‘I know, but . . .’ Jamie looked up at the gloomy sky. ‘I don’t much like the wet.’

Joan remembered him as a boy, bare feet splashing in the lake. He loves the water, Tom had said. What had happened to him as a captive? Whatever it was, he seemed changed in this timeline. The clear-eyed boy who’d painted fish by the lake had been replaced by a man with a wary but polite demeanour.

He held the umbrella solicitously over Joan as well as himself as they walked, even when she protested that she didn’t mind the rain.

They took the path around the old orangery. Through its arched windows, Joan could see people preparing for an event, setting tables with shining silverware and flower arrangements. In Joan’s memories, there’d been potted orange trees in this part of the garden—outside in summer, to be put back inside the orangery in winter.

‘I don’t remember much,’ Jamie said. ‘The Liu power only gives me fragments of the other timeline.’

Looking at his gloved hands, his coat, Joan wondered. ‘What do you remember?’ she asked.